1,000,000 Cards For Kids

About a week ago, I stumbled across Doc’s Baseball Card Recollections blog. He actually had some pretty cool puzzles on his site (something he is currently trying to work into a book), but what struck me was this link:

DONATE YOUR UNWANTED CARDS

Curiosity got the best of me and I clicked to another blog that he is working on. His idea is simple, donate your unwanted cards to children’s hospitals or orphanages. This idea hit home for me as I have been racking my brain to figure out what can be done with bad wax cards, or even good wax cards. I want to dedicate a post a week to this cause.

This is the kick off post (at least on this blog). I want to throw this idea out to all my fellow bloggers and non bloggers. I want you to post about this on your blog. Use the graphic below to promote it. Here is a set of guidelines as originally written by Doc:

Suggestions on How to Package Donated Cards

After some feedback from potential donors, I thought it would be a good idea to post some ideas on how to package your card donations. Here are some basic suggestions:

Divide your cards into lots of 50.

Make sure there are no doubles in each lot.

Provide as much brand and year variety as possible (There is nothing wrong with Bad Wax Era cards, so donate them!).

Try to include a few star players or HOFers if possible.

Seal the cards in plastic bags.

Place the lot bags into a cardboard box or plastic tub for the charitable organization to keep on site. Include your name and contact info on the box/tub, so the organization can contact you if they need more cards.

Consider the market in which you are donating. If the southern Florida area, try to include local teams (e.g., Marlins, Heat, Dolphins, Panthers, etc.).

Place the 1,000,000 Cards for Kids information card in each 50 card lot or as a sticker on the lot plastic bag.

I did a basic information card about 1,000,000 Cards for Kids, and I would appreciate it if they were included with each 50 card donation lot. I am not interested in personal acknowledgement, but I do think it is important that the children and parents know where the cards are coming from.

Therefore, I included the website address and a place for you to add your name and email address on the information card. Hopefully, we will get some feedback from children/parents to the website and/or email addresses, so we can post it on the blog.

If you are going to stick the information card onto or in the plastic bag, please email me for a template that holds 9 cards on one 8 ½ by 11-inch page. For sticker labels, you can find reasonably priced full sheet labels on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001QT4VA4), or your local office supply store. The Amazon link has 100 pages for around $12. That’s 900 labels you could make for up to 45,000 cards to donate!

Thank you for considering donating your unwanted cards, and please spread the word! There are a lot of us in this trading card blogosphere and we could put smiles on a lot of faces.

What’s In it for me?

Possibly introduce children to the hobby.

Helping out less fortunate children.

Feel good about yourself knowing you made one child’s day.

Get rid of your bad wax and base cards that are just collecting dust anyways

Tax deduction (fair market price can be used for itemized deductions), maybe CPA Dave could help us out on that one?

Counts towards Toys for Tots.

What’s next?

Every week (Wednesdays) I am going to be posting pictures and emails submitted by users.

Get your name and or your blog put on the Wall of Fame, different levels for more participation (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Diamond).

I am going to start talking to the card companies to try and get donations for local children’s hospitals and orphanages. Also possibly get donations to give away to participants.

As the Holiday Season approaches, this will light up the eyes of the less fortunate children.

The floor is open if you have suggestions, let’s get it out there!

Pledge your participation in a comment below or on your blog or both.

Goals?

1 million cards donated.

A continued participation year after year.

Bring the blogging community together for a great cause.

Use this to teach your children the importance of giving to the less fortunate.

Please feel free to come up with another graphic. I kind of put something together quickly. If you use the link for the picture I will update the graphic often.

Like this:

Related

I started doing this around Christmas time several years back. I probably had 100,000 junk wax cards from the 80s/90s so I’d buy several boxes of sandwich bags, package around 100 cards per bad, write ‘Merry Christmas’ on each before dropping them off at the local Salvation Army/Goodwill with the stipulation of ‘please give these to kids who pass through for FREE’.

Who knows if kids really got my cards or if some card hoarder passed through and picked up the 500 lbs of junk wax…..but either way, it cleaned out a lot of closet space for myself.

The idea of donating them to the Childrens Hospital is a better idea. Wish I would have thought of that back then.

[…] out, donate them to the less fortunate. The kids will thank you. For more information look at my first post that outlines the charity. If you don’t want to do it yourself, you can send me your cards […]